Police cautioned over loose talk

"Delta four-nine-three. Got a jakey in a barney who's shot the craw, need back-up, over.""I beg your pardon, constable. Is there a problem?"

Policemen are to be told to stop using regional dialects because they cannot be understood by colleagues in other parts of the country.

The order comes with the introduction of Airwave, the new £2.9 billion national police radio system, which allows officers to communicate across force boundaries for the first time.

The Government's National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) will next month launch a £25,000 scheme to teach standard English to officers.

They will be asked to abandon dialect words and phrases, such as the Glaswegian terms jakey (drunk), barney (fight) and shoot the craw (run off), in favour of standard English alternatives.

Officers can also send text messages via the new radios, raising the prospect of "LOLOLO" becoming a standard greeting.

An NPIA spokesman said: "Because Airwave is a national system, there's a need to rationalise the way officers speak on the radio.

"There's so much regional diversity that the use of a common language will increase understanding. This will be the first time UK police have a nationwide standard phraseology and procedure." Because airtime on the new system is expensive, brevity will be encouraged. According to the NPIA, "Regional phrases might take much longer to say than a clipped national term".

Pleasantries such as "Evenin' all" will be discouraged. Officers will be told to begin each radio conversation with a terse statement of their call sign and location.

The NPIA commissioned research by Edward Johnson, a Cambridge University linguist, who identified 50 ways in which police officers say "Yes" on the radio. They include "aye", "yeah", "OK", "wilco", "will do", "right", "alright", "go ahead", "excellent", "thank you" and "affirmative".

Officers will be told to abandon these in favour of three standard terms - "Received" for "I have understood you"; "Yes yes" for "I agree", and "Will do" for "I shall carry out the task".

Mr Johnson said: "Countless operational errors over the years have resulted from inappropriate communications provision, inadequate procedures and poorly worded messages. Many lives have been sacrificed in the process."

He cited examples including the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854, when the loss of 118 British soldiers is said to have resulted from a misinterpreted command, and the case of Derek Bentley, hanged for murder in January 1953 after he gave his armed accomplice the ambiguous instruction, "Let him have it, Chris".